Julie Otsuka's commanding and passionate debut novel explores unfamiliar history - that of Japanese Americans in World War II. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination of a generation who find themselves interned in their own country. With each chapter flawlessly executed from a different point of view - the mother; the daughter; the son; the family's return to their home; and the bitter release of their father - she has created a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. When The Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times. It heralds the arrival of a singularly gifted new novelist.